The Burning White (130 page)

She looked at the card. “This asshole? You owe Andross Guile nothing!”

“I owe him our marriage,” Kip said simply. He didn’t look at her, still. He thought maybe he had enough residual luxin in his body to trigger the card.

She pressed the card to his skin. It slapped down as of its own volition, tap, tap, tap.

He grunted at the flood of Andross’s memories. A lifetime passed in a few moments, and then Kip was back. “Hmm. Damn. I was kind of hoping the old man maybe helped construct Orholam’s Glare or something and knew a secret way for me to . . . well, not die. No such luck. No magic way out.”

It was really the wrong time to try to comprehend what he’d just seen. But he had duties.

“You tell Andross I Viewed his card. Tell him . . . tell him my respect for and loathing of him have both grown immensely. He should laugh . . . I love you,” he said. He could see the steps to the platform up ahead. They didn’t have any more time. “You have given me one perfect thing. In a life suddenly overfull with blessings, you were the brightest and best gift of all.”

He took a quick breath and blinked back the tears.

“Now, go, quickly. I have to maintain this tough-guy façade for a few more minutes.”

“Kip,” she said quietly, “you will always be a dragon to me.”

“Oh, that is adorable,” a voice broke in. Zymun. “My little dragon-poo. And what is she? Your little bunny-kins?” He pushed past her. His halos were shattered, and red raged through the whites of his eyes, but either no one noticed or no one dared say anything. “I know I should be up on the array, but I . . . I just couldn’t miss this,” Zymun said. “Plus, you do have so many friends. I couldn’t bear to have you so far out of my grasp. Good, let’s do this! Places, everyone!”

Kip was marched straight up the platform. They started strapping him to the frame.

Facing out, he saw a small crowd gathering. The execution hadn’t been announced, and most of the civilians of Big Jasper had taken to cowering in their homes, anyway, but this sudden gathering of people at one of the most important intersections in the city garnered attention.

Kip saw a messenger from Corvan Danavis at the Great Fountain heading toward the Chromeria. She pulled up her horse.

She saw Kip and recognized him, and immediately turned her horse around. She galloped away.

Too late. Even if she cut past all the other messengers coming and going around the high general at the Great Fountain, even if Corvan Danavis himself heard her immediately, even if he had horses waiting and issued the orders immediately—even if he disregarded the fact that attacking the Prism would be treason—Corvan still wouldn’t arrive in time.

Kip appreciated that they were trying, though.

The Lightguards cinched the straps tight on his arms and legs.

“Hurry up,” Zymun said. “The sun’s not far from the horizon. Is it going to be hot enough to kill him?”

“Easily, sir. I mean, it’s not gonna turn him to ash, but he’ll burn,” one of the men strapping Kip in said. “He’ll die faster if we remove the colored lenses first, but burn or pop, he’ll go all right! Your choice.”

Kip felt a sudden reverberation in blue, and Zymun tensed, too. It seemed he and Zymun were the only blue drafters in sight.

Blue suddenly felt free once more.

Big Leo had done it! Damn, and he’d done it fast, too! Holy shit, Big Leo.

Maybe Big Leo could . . . but no. He was several thousand paces away, and if the bane evaporated in the next minute or three, he was going to be several thousand paces away and
swimming
. And he didn’t know Kip was here.

Big Leo wouldn’t be coming in time.

Funny thing. Zymun had said, ‘You do have so many friends.’

It was true. Kip had no doubt that his friends would drop everything and run for him when they heard about his need.

When had that happened?

Growing up, he’d always been the outsider, the kid scared of being rejected again. And look at this! This life he was leaving? How could the son of a drug-addled prostitute hope for even a day of
this
life? Kip had tasted honey that few in the history of the world had tasted: he’d had meaningful work, and friendship with titans; a great marriage to a strong, good, beautiful woman; and a father who’d been willing to die for him. Kip had had a couple years of a life that old chubby Kip of Rekton would have happily died to have for a single day.

How could he face his death with anything but gratitude?

Yet he was still afraid.

He’d seen immortals coming with the bane when that strange wave had passed. Maybe . . . “Rea?” he whispered. “Are you here?”

“Of course I’m here!” the immortal, all invisible, said in his ear.

She was weeping.

That meant she couldn’t stop this.

“Will you . . .”—his voice choked—“will you help me be brave? I don’t feel very brave right now.”

The frame lifted him suddenly into the air.

The mirrors grated on their gears as they began to turn into place.

“Look, and
see
,” Rea said.

Kip blinked. It wasn’t like looking in paryl or superviolet, but rather more akin to looking through that immense wave that had passed over the Jaspers. It felt like his eyes were only slowly bending into focus, his mortal lenses unaccustomed to seeing this spectrum: what he was seeing was more real than reality.

First, his eyes fell on the normal people of the crowd gathering around the great intersection. They were weirdly, undeniably themselves but different, as if now he could see the whole self. The outward things, such as their beauty or plainness, their clothing, the shape of this nose or that pallid tone of skin all remained, but faded by comparison: This boy shone with goodness. That nursemaid streamed prayers like incense but more real than drafted luxin as she carried her ward toward his home. Others walked in darkness. A butcher hungered for the spectacle of an execution to fill the dark, empty gnashing of his pain. A fisherman radiated casual cruelty, his hands twisted by violence.

But then, in the gaps between the mortal gawkers, he saw
others
, unencumbered by mortal trappings.

Glassine figures glowed as if lit from above, then slowly resolved into people. People he knew. He saw Luisa Sendina of Rekton, who’d not only fed the addict’s boy: serving up compassion in food, but also speaking to him, listening to him despite the chaos of her own five children. He saw sweet Isabel—Orholam have mercy, she’d been a child!

What was going on?

Then he saw Gaspar Elos, the man who’d gone green wight whom Kip had met that night before the burning of Rekton. He was wight no longer. He stood with folded arms and a little smirk on his lips. He moved a finger to his head, as if tipping a hat that he wasn’t wearing.

Janus Borig appeared decades younger, but still chewing on a long-stemmed pipe, studying him with a portraitist’s intensity. At his gaze meeting hers, she brightened and winked at him. The radiant woman next to her—the Third Eye?—curtsied perfectly in a swirl of golden cloth.

The hulking mass of a shaggy red-bearded man could only be Rónán Arthur, Conn Ruadhán’s twin. He put his hand to his heart in salute.

Felia Guile stood at the back, his grandmother, her back ramrod straight, an apologetic half smile on her lips and her eyes bright.

Goss stood next to Gavin Greyling, each in their blacks. They nodded to him:
You got this. You can do it, brother.
And then they snapped to attention, saluting him.

Tremblefist appeared—no, not Tremblefist any longer,
Hanishu
, not in his blacks but in his Old Parian garb, with the frailties and brokenness of life fallen away from his soul. He nodded with fierce approval.

Next was the young commander beside them: Cruxer. Kip felt a flaring of anger at the same time he felt a surge of love and longing and emptiness. Dammit, Cruxer,
dammit
.

But the anger melted. Here was Cruxer purified, his earthly rigidity gone. Lucia—who’d died for Kip, if accidentally—dear Lucia, whom Cruxer had so loved, stood next to him, and they were at peace.

It had taken Kip until now to understand. These were all the people who’d loved him, who’d already gone on before. They’d gathered, a great cloud of witnesses, to stand for him in his final hour. They’d come so that he wouldn’t die alone.

And then his eyes fell on one thin woman standing off to one side. Mother.

Once, long ago—though he carried the words as if it were yesterday—she’d said to him, ‘You’re nothing. You’re not special. And if anyone really knew you, they’d hate you as much as I do.’

Mother, how much were you hurting when you said those words? How much did you hate yourself afterward for saying them?

For he knew she had.

For he remembered her, on a different night, sober two days and shaking in her vomit-stained blankets, not for the first time. But this time she’d come to his side when she thought him asleep; she was weeping. She’d touched his cheek with a trembling hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I am gonna beat this, and I’ll be the mother you deserve. I love you, Kip.’

She’d failed that time, though, as she had before.

But they’d all failed, hadn’t they?

Kip could stare at most of them and name a fault, even a crime, but instead he saw them with love, and that changed everything.

“Thank you,” he whispered to Rea, to all of them. It was enough.

He could do this, because even if he failed to die well, it didn’t matter. Who, out of all the people that mattered, would think less of him?

The moment passed and the vision passed as Kip was ratcheted into place, but the peace clung to him like the smell of smoke after a bonfire.

Zymun didn’t order Kip turned upward to face the sky, as they did with traitors and wights to keep them from lashing out at the audience. No, Zymun didn’t want to miss the agony on Kip’s face, and he obviously wasn’t worried that Kip would kill innocents.

The mirrors were all coming into alignment, covered with their cloths, heating up.

“Oh, Kip. Just in case you get any ideas: you make any move to attack me or my men, I kill Tisis. Even if you stop me, my men’ll do it. You stop the man with a gun, another’s got a knife. Probably went without saying, right? But—”

Suddenly, a fruit seller stepped forward. Kip had never seen the man before in his life. “Lord Guile!” he shouted, interrupting Zymun, who stopped, thinking the man was speaking to him. “No, not you,” the man said. “Kip, I have a word for you. A word from the Lord of Lights Himself! I’ve no idea what it means, but I never do. Orholam says, ‘Remember blubber.’ ”

“What the—? Who is that?” Zymun demanded. “Seize him!”

But the fruit seller ran off, and the Lightguards didn’t try very hard to catch him.

Kip started cry-laughing. An
inappropriate
word from Orholam? Only the inappropriate
could
be appropriate for Kip. Andross Guile, the smartest man Kip had ever met, had been unable to conceive of a god who could be both big enough to create all the Thousand Worlds and small enough to care about each living thing on them.

But Andross was wrong. One terrified fruit seller who hadn’t dared to be a prophet had proven the smartest man in the world wrong. Orholam saw. Elrahee. Orholam heard. Elishama. Orholam cared. Eliada.

It was as if He were saying, ‘Kip, I waste nothing. You fear that you’ll scream for mercy? I made you for this yoke. I’ve already made you so that you won’t.’

Blubber can take punishment. Fat kids are tougher than anyone knows, especially themselves.

“Start it now!” Zymun ordered. “Just the colored mirrors. I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s see him pop!”

Kip had avoided looking at Tisis. Hadn’t thought he could take the sight of softness and care. He should have known better.

Zymun had forced her to her knees, and there was a bright-red handprint across her cheek—he must have slapped her—but though her eyes streamed tears, she stared defiantly, proudly at Kip.

I can’t protect her, Orholam. They’re gonna kill me, and that leaves her alone with that animal. And with an army coming over the walls. Orholam, I can’t do anything for her.

That was the real reason he hadn’t dared look at her. He was leaving so much work undone. He was leaving people who counted on him.

Orholam, You are Eliphalet. Save her, please.

For Kip could not. There was only one thing he could do for her now.

He could die well.

He could do that. He could suffer. That was his one great talent, after all.

He met her gaze, and hoped his eyes said all that his lips wished to.

During normal executions on the Glare, the mirrors were covered with black cloth until all the mirrors were in place, but Zymun afforded Kip no such decency and didn’t wait until the mirrors got killing-hot.

They seared him instantly.

Kip was already exhausted from his ordeal directing the mirrors. But fat kids know how to take punishment.

Zymun didn’t keep Kip covered until all the mirrors were brought into line. He didn’t care how executions on the Glare were usually done, or about minimizing the condemned’s suffering. He wanted the opposite. As soon as the city’s mirrors could be turned, Kip was pummeled with hot light in every color.

Green hit Kip first, tearing his eyes open like a too-large swallow of water—except that the swallowing just wouldn’t end. He felt a crack as deep as his bones, taking his breath, stabbing his eyes, and sending shivers down every limb as his halos blew out.

Slivers of luxin exploded out of the white of his eyes, blinding him momentarily. Blood trickled down his face.

Then sub-red burrowed into him like hot coals pressed sizzling through his eyeballs.

It was pain unlike anything he’d ever experienced. When he’d fallen in the fire and burned his left hand, he’d squeezed it convulsively into a fist—but here the fist was his mind itself, crackling, cooking, splitting in the heat like an overcooked sausage.

Breaking the halo shattered the boundaries of his self. He was suddenly connected to all the green around him. The green drafters on the Jaspers felt like beacons; the bane felt like a star come to earth. It was dazzling, it was beautiful, it was insanity itself, and it called to him.